Roundup.

No. 25 Virginia Uses Big Plays To Beat Georgia Tech

ATLANTA — While George Welsh fretted over calming down his quarterback, Larry Holmes turned in two plays that should have calmed the Virginia coach.

Holmes caught a 30-yard touchdown pass and set up a score with a 65-yard kickoff return as the 25th-ranked Cavaliers beat Georgia Tech 35-14 Thursday night.

Holmes got behind Lethon Flowers for his scoring reception from Symmion Willis, giving Virginia a 9-0 lead in the Atlantic Coast Conference game.

Tech's Mike Williams prevented a 100-yard kickoff return when he bumped Holmes out of bounds on the Tech 35, but four plays later Kevin Brooks scored from the 7, giving Virginia a 15-7 lead.

Welsh said he told Willis, a redshirt sophomore playing in his hometown, to "forget about all this other stuff and play the game. I don't know if he was good, bad or indifferent, frankly. The team won the game. There was some great effort out there tonight on both sides of the ball."

The Cavaliers (3-0, 2-0) beat Tech (1-1, 0-1) for the fifth time in the last seven meetings. It also was Virginia's fourth victory in its last five trips to Atlanta.

Both ACC victories have come on the road, but the Cavs don't figure to win their next conference trip-at top-ranked Florida State on Oct. 16.

The Yellow Jackets gave up one fumble and three interceptions, two of the pass thefts setting up fourth-quarter touchdowns that put the game out of reach.

"If you turn the ball over, you give them favorable field position, and they're good enough offensively to take advantage of that," Tech coach Bill Lewis said.

Virginia's biggest problem in the first half was converting extra points. A high snap prevented a kick after the first touchdown, and Willis was stopped on an attempted run after the second.

Virginia scored twice in the final quarter after pass interceptions, the first on Charles Way's 33-yard run and the other a 6-yard run by Brooks with 34 seconds left in the game.